Wednesday, February 15, 2012

How to tell if you’re a “Self-Appointed Defender of the Orthodoxy”

Last week I took John Baez’s on-line test to find out if I was a
crackpot. One item that cost me 20 points was Question 28: have you ever used
the phrase “self-appointed defender of the orthodoxy”. Then it occurred to me
that maybe those people have as much trouble recognizing themselves as the
crackpots have, so there ought to be a test to help identify them. So based on
my own many years of personal encounters with that type, here is my list of ten
questions that will tell you if you are indeed a “self-appointed defender of
the orthodoxy”.

1. Do you
respond to internet postings by people you consider crackpots?

Why? I go on the internet looking for good discussions with smart
people who know what they are talking about. I’m not interested in the people
who post garbage, and I don’t understand people who make a big deal of it.

2. Have
you ever said: “Even if you are right about X, how do you explain Y?”

It’s the “even if” that bothers me the most, because you avoid taking a
stand either way. If you think someone is right about X, you should acknowledge
it. If you think he is wrong about X, then argue him down on his specific case.
Don’t change the subject by challenging him on Y, especially if he has made no
claims about Y.

2a. (EDIT: I thought of this one later.) A nasty variation on item 2: "Even if you're right, so what?"

How do people get off pretending that the whole game of physics isn't about trying to be right? As though you're not motivated by petty things like the quest for personal glory, but somehow your opponent is. And the worst thing about is is the "if" clause: you don't even commit one way or another on the physics, you just question the motivational psychology of your adversary.

3. Do you
normally refute false arguments by giving a published reference instead of
making your own counter-argument?

For me, this is the biggest problem with the world of physics. People
love arguing by reference to authority. That’s a much bigger problem than the
existence of so-called crackpots.

4. Do you
argue that a theory is useless unless it makes testable predictions, presumably
different from those of the Standard Model?

This is basically John Baez’s clincher, his 50-point final question. If
you take it seriously you have to throw away every insight that makes existing
knowledge understandable in a different way. Bohmian mechanics? I’m no fan of
it, but I certainly don’t claim it’s useless because it “merely” claims to
duplicate the results of the Standard Model. You might as well throw out Lagrangian
Mechanics because it doesn’t predict anything different from F=ma.

5. Have
you ever said “QED is the most accurate theory known to man, verifed experimentally
to eleven decimal places”?

Or used any other line from Feynman as a debating point, without
attribution. Unless you happen to be Feynmann himself. Then you get a pass on
this one.

6. Do you
challenge your opponents to refute arguments in published articles available
only to paid subscribers, which you link to in your posts?

This is another nice tactic from the “What-do-you-say-about-THIS-then?”
grab-bag. In fact there is way too much argument by reference to authority. That’s
not what physics should be about.

7. Do you
see your participation in discussion groups as a form of public service?

I get into discussions on the internet because it’s fun for me. I also like
to challenge myself by getting into skirmishes sometimes. If you participate in
discussions because you believe someone ought to protect the naïve from being
misled by false ideas, then you are probably a self-appointing defender of the
orthodoxy.

8. Have
you ever commented on the sanity or otherwise of people you argue with on the
internet?

If they’re so crazy, why are you wasting your time arguing with them?

9. Do you
make fun of people who question the theory of evolution?

There is a good case to be made that we are indeed descended from
earthworms, but it is not so unreasonable to doubt that the mechanism whereby
we got from there to here was based on an accumulation of random errors in the transmission
of the genetic code.

10. Have
you ever gotten someone banned from a discussion group?

Enough said.

I don’t have an official scoring guide, but if you answered “yes” to
four or more of these, then you are probably a self-apointed defender of the
orthodoxy. If you answered “yes” to nine or more, then you are probably either
ZapperZ, Jim Carr of Mati Meron.

4 comments:

I am a proud self appointed defender of the orthodoxy. I only responded to the ones that apply to me.

1. Do you respond to internet postings by people you consider crackpots?Yes, however I do not seek them out. I mainly respond when they get something about evolution wrong like predict a different result than the most likely one.

2. Have you ever said: “Even if you are right about X, how do you explain Y?”Not those exact words but I only attack those parts of a post that are wrong.

3. Do you normally refute false arguments by giving a published reference instead of making your own counter-argument?I love using references at the end of my posts, It means that I can argue about things slightly outside of my expertise more aptly.

4. Do you argue that a theory is useless unless it makes testable predictions, presumably different from those of the Standard Model?Indeed I do. My words were "you can't build a grand sweeping theory from one example, purposely taken out of the surrounding context. A grand theory needs the thousands of details that fit it"

6. Do you challenge your opponents to refute arguments in published articles available only to paid subscribers, which you link to in your posts?I have (I couldn't get to it either so I just used the title). But to be fair the title stated the existence of something that my opponent said couldn't exist, and my opponent was a grad student so should be able to get access through his institution.

7. Do you see your participation in discussion groups as a form of public service? Only to the person I'm talking to.

9. Do you make fun of people who question the theory of evolution?No I just figure they have no idea what they are talking about. Fighting people who are that wrong is pointless.

I make it four or five out of 10, because you stretch it a bit on points 2 and 4. I'm looking for pretty specific arguments there and it's not clear to me that you are totally in the zone. Still, it does seem to be where your sentiments lie, so I guess you do fit the profile.

Have you seen "Unbreakable"? It seems like I ought to be your Samuel Jackson ("Mr. Glass") and you could be my Bruce Willis. The internet is a lonely place for us crackpots unless we find a defender of the orthodoxy to be our arch-nemesis. Haven't you read my "Quantum Siphoning" where I claim to discover a whole new paradigm for how we can understand the universe? That should get your spider-sense tingling if nothing else does.

The reason I don't criticize your physics posts is because I am no expert on physics. Is My orthodoxy is and expertise is evolution (I'm coauthoring a paper on crossover in genetic programming). I am very interested in physics especially quantum physics. To me your posts about physics are educational just as scott aaronson's blog is. If you had a post that invoked anything related to evolution I would have to correct any incorrect details for you.